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In support of the human sacrifice theory, Kaiser in Hard Sayings of the Bible says:
People, even servants of God, do horrid things. This era was very corrupt and there is no reason to see Jephthah as substantially different than his contemporaries.
The sacrifice of his daughter is the most natural way to interpret the text. Gleason Archer (who opposes ...

The wise men came after baby Jesus was presented in the temple.
If you see a harmony of the Gospels, like Study Resources :: Harmony of the Gospels, you will find that the wise men came long after Jesus was presented in the temple.
Presentation in the temple
A woman who bore a son was ceremonially unclean for forty days (twice that if she bore a daughter ...

There is no mention in the text of dedication or of the tabernacle, and so the main thing recommending an interpretation involving those things is the bewailing of virginity. I won't go so far as to say that a reading of dedication to tabernacle service is completely unwarranted; but I want to give some push back to some of the points in Frank Luke's answer ...

Jews reject the argument that Cain's sacrifice was insufficient because it did not involve blood, and they have some good arguments. Leviticus clearly spells out various "grain offerings," and there is even one example of a "sin offering" where the poor people were allowed to offer grain instead of an animal sacrifice. (See Lev. 5:11-13.)
The traditional ...

Rashi says she was killed:
and it was a statute: They decreed that no one should do this anymore
(i.e., they publicized that no one should offer a human being),
because had Jephthah gone to Phinehas or vice versa, he would have
nullified his (i.e., Jephthah’s) vow (i.e., he would have instructed
him what the law is in such an instance). However, ...

The verb in question (ba'ar) is "to set on fire", per the Analytical Key to the Old Testament. Furthermore, the Hebrew is clearly saying "into the fire" (the B in front of the clause is "In" such as "In the beginning")
The interesting thing to me in researching this, however, is that the incense that is burned in the previous verse is burned using a ...

The Ben Hinom valley appears a number of times in the Tanakh, and is the site of worship for the Molech god. Opinions differ as to how exactly the god was served, but it involves either burning (to death) or singeing. See Gehenna on the location, and Moloch on the practice.

Then the king of Moab took his oldest son, who would have been the next king, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering on the wall. So there was great anger against Israel, and the Israelites withdrew and returned to their own land. (2 Kings 3:27, NLT)
I'd interpret this as saying that the king sacrificed his son which then fuelled the rage of the ...

Restatement of the Question: Why was Abel's sacrifice considered 'greater', 'more', or 'above' Cain's? Was it because they were different types of sacrifice, or was there something else at work?
Historically, there is a great amount of speculation regarding this passage, but this answer is constrained to Scripture only :
Answer 1: Because Cain ...

The writer of Hebrews analyses why Abel's sacrifice was accepted and Cain's wasn't.
Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks.
The difference between the two sacrifices was that Abel brought ...

I found this and thought it would be useful:
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary (2 Kings 3:27):
took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering, &c.— By this deed of horror, to which the allied army drove the king of Moab, a divine judgment came upon Israel; that is, the besiegers feared the ...